Caring and love

As alluded to in both my and DK’s intro posts… Romantic love is not going to be a part of what we are and where we’re going. This, I think, is the biggest difference between what we’re doing and most M/s couples you’ll read about.

I think a common misunderstanding, one I certainly had, is that no love means no caring or emotional content. It’s something that both DK and I have accepted, now. Neither of us are naive enough to think that I won’t fall in love with him but even then, I don’t think it’ll be the same sort of love you normally read about.

Our analogy to explain how love and affection work here is basically that of a service animal, like a dog for the blind or a police dog. There’s a very deep bond and I will come to absolutely adore him… but it’s not a romantic relationship. At the end of the day, I am there to work and I’m not his pet.

He already cares about me. That’s why he invests the time into me. He cares about my health, my well-being, my moods, my whereabouts, my thought processes, my sleep… The difference between this sort of caring and the “normal” sort of caring in a relationship is that he doesn’t have an obligation to remedy any problems.

If I’m unhappy, it’s usually in his best interests to find out why. Happy property is more effective property. Training happy and compliant property is easier than training cranky, unhappy and resentful property. Just like a working animal. A happy sniffer dog works better than a lonely and unhappy one. However… as I said… He is not bound by any obligation other than his own interests and preferences to keep me happy and healthy.

I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that he feels a moral obligation to keep me mostly happy but I am well aware of the fact that there are going to be times where I dig my heels in because where we’re about to go is going to make me miserable and he will simply drag me. I typed the word ‘regardless’ onto the end there. I don’t think it’s regardless. I think he regards every emotion I tell him about. It’s him who decides which of my emotions need to be changed, which need to be heeded as warnings and which need to be ignored.

The love that I will develop for him is, again, like that of a police dog. I will adore him. I will still respond to him much better than anyone else. I will get excited everytime he talks to me. His commands, body language, tone of voice, hand signals and general demeanour will become more important to me than all the screaming, shouting and, in the future, or laws that are telling me to do something. His command will trump all. My adoration and loyalty to him will trump everything.

From his side… He will grow attached to me. Hopefully he will thoroughly enjoy working with me, owning me, using me, training me, moulding me, changing me… but I am not his domestic pet. I already know from experience that affection is going to exist but it’s not going to be expected. I’ll most definitely need weaning off the affection but when he’s finished training me, I’ll be just as happy with being in the same room as him as I would be if he patted me on the head.

The fact that he doesn’t love me and will never love me actually makes what we’re working towards easier. When he starts being a bastard, my feelings don’t get as hurt. When I get upset, instead of weeping about “how could he do this to me”, the distance between us makes me look at what he’s doing a little less emotionally and causes me to take that step back and say “Yes. He can do this to me.”

The last few days where I have been in absolutely agony and had quite a few emotional breakdowns, he’s proved that he does care about me and that I am important to him so I know I won’t be left to die in the cold but I also know that I won’t always be brought inside to cuddle and curl up with a hot water bottle and a teddy.

That’s what lovers do for each other. When was the last time you saw a police officer run his K9 partner a bubble bath with roses?